


Fire and Hearthstone

by barbiehighheels



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 23:52:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17253725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbiehighheels/pseuds/barbiehighheels
Summary: it's 2 long because i have no self control





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mortalfinlay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortalfinlay/gifts).



Illyana tilts her wooden chair back on two legs; letting her skull thud dully against the cold stone wall behind her. She gazes up, listening to the icy wind howling low and longing throughout the crumbling granite rafters overhead. No one warns you about how drafty it gets in hell.

Limbo has all the other requisite earmarks for a Christian imagining of hell, after all--devils dancing under a sick-pale moon, laughing and maliced, omnipresent animus, the cruel bloodsport of demons in a place stinking of sulphur and brimstone, and waves of noxious, choking heat wafting up from the blighted and cracked dead earth.

What does it say about her to be the champion of such a place? To rule Limbo as its Queen? She is both Hades and Persephone.

“Intruder at the south gate, ser.”

She lets her chair legs smack back down with an offensive clatter, a sound that echoes in the cavernous stone great hall. There are no carpets, no tapestries on the wall, no softness of any kind to muffle sound in the castle. The demon servant who brought the announcement doesn’t react.

Illyana hasn’t learned his name--in this citadel castle he first served Belasco, and now Illyana as its ruler. She’s confident he will next serve whoever replaces Illyana as ruler of Limbo when she is inevitably killed by them.

“Is there a mount ready?” Illyana asks. Her voice sounds young and girlish, much too small for such a gaping maw of a great hall.

“No,” the demon servant answers. And then takes his leave.

“Okay,” Illyana replies to the now-empty room. Her little voice reverberates back mockingly. She scoots her rickety chair back, deliberately scraping the legs against the flagstones to make an awful screeching sound. This, too, echoes. She permits a small smile at this. At least the acoustics in hell are top-notch. 

 

* * *

 

 

“ _Hyah_!” She kicks her spiked sabaton into the horse’s side, and the beast reacts with a contentious buck.

She saddled up the vicious war horse, the one with a mane of blue flames and a taste for human flesh. No one else can get anywhere near her, and she’s even snapped at Illyana more than a few times--but Illyana has a soft spot for this wretched creature, regardless. For a few reasons. 

Illyana named her Rhiannon.

Pushing her to a gallop is fruitless to combat the fetid heat in hell, but the feeling of Illyana’s black Darkchylde cape flapping and snapping in the wind behind her is pleasant nonetheless. She leans forward, urging Rhiannon even faster in the direction the intruder was rumored to be.

Within moments of entering the poison gardens, she spies movement in the shadows under the barbed thistle hedge maze--just a hint of a single cloaked figure hugging the darkness, trying not to be seen. This intruder is stupid, she thinks, clanking down the visor down of her helm, and relishing the stinging on her scalp of her horns beginning to grow. Illyana’s throne won’t be easily won.

Illyana doesn’t even need to tell her horse where to go. Rhiannon, hungry and on the hunt, leaps over the barbed perimeter of thistle hedge maze with ease. The beast can smell her next meal. She lands right in front of the intruder’s path, skidding on the pitted bone gravel, and the intruder--the very _small_ , and light-footed intruder--turns heel and runs. Back in the opposite direction.

She spurs Rhiannon forward and chases after the intruder, holding her sword aloft and ready to cut them down in one fatal swing. This area of the thistle maze is a straight line.

This intruder is _stupid_ , she thinks again, pulling her soulsword from the center of her chest. Illyana finds a comfort in the feeling of instantaneous emptiness that always accompanies this action. She is currently soulless. She is instead holding her soul in her hand, and wielding it like a sword. Nothing can hurt her like this. And nothing can hurt her if she hurts it first.

She doesn’t even feel a hint of guilt as Illyana raises her soulsword and prepares to cleave the intruder open between the shoulder blades. Rhiannon will eat well tonight.

But what she does feel next, however, is a sickening lurch in the pit of her stomach as her soulsword instead passes harmlessly through the intruder. She can hear nothing but the blood rush in her ears as the nausea intensifies, demanding attention, and Illyana forcefully reins a frothing Rhiannon to a stop.

She feels heat rising in her cheeks as she turns and faces the intruder, who tosses her cloak hood back with a broad grin, eyes lighting up at the sight of the soulsword.

“Hey, roomie!” Kitty Pryde exclaims. “I foun--”

But the war horse lurches forward jaws-first at Kitty in a sickening blur. Rhiannon is hungry. 

Illyana has grabbed Kitty’s upper arm and hauled her up into the saddle without thinking. She feels sick. She feels too many things, all at once, and is holding her soulsword in one hand and Kitty Pryde in the other. She is gripping Pryde’s arm firmly, holding her in the saddle in front of her. She feels sick. The sound of blood rushing in her ears is too much. She recalls Piotr holding a seashell up to her once, pretending it contained an ocean. She could hear it, too. Illyana feels like she contains the roar of an ocean, and the sound of Kitty’s bubbly laughter is an unwelcome interruption to add to this turbulence.

“I could have just _phased_ , goofball! You didn’t have to _grab_ me like that. You looked so panicked, oh my gosh.” She’s twisted around in the saddle to smile and gush up at Illyana riding pillion behind her.

The intruder is Kitty Pryde and the intruder is _very stupid_ ; confirmed.

Illyana’s mouth is too dry to speak. This is what fear does when it finishes burning through you. She doesn’t have the energy to articulate her terror about almost cutting Kitty down just now or almost feeding her to a voracious war horse, or any number of terrifying fates Kitty could have met getting to the castle. So she wordlessly snaps the reins, urging her horse back to the castle. Rhiannon resists at first, unwilling to give her intended dinner a ride, but eventually trots onwards.

“Hey, I like your shiny suit! Is it uncomfortable? Can you actually fight in it? Can you touch your toes?” Kitty babbles brightly, oblivious.

 

* * *

 

 

“You don’t even celebrate Christmas,” Illyana spits, pacing furiously in the dark study. She’s left behind fear and has moved on to fuming.

Kitty, draped sideways across a ruined armchair, rolls her eyes. “ _You_ do, though.”

Illyana stops in her tracks. “So?”

Kitty rolls her eyes again, even more exaggerated. “ _So_ ,” Kitty explains, “I didn’t want you to be alone.” She says this as if it’s obvious. A fact. Illyana briefly ponders potential retaliatory acts if Kitty rolls her eyes a third time.

“Kitty, that’s _not_ your decision! I didn’t invite you. Who even teleported you here!?”

Kitty drops her gaze now, presumably reluctant to snitch on someone. Illyana will figure it out sooner or later, though. And she’ll make them pay. Idiots. They had _no idea_ what kind of danger they were putting Kitty in.

Ancient sconces flicker with sickly green magelight on the walls. It smells like books and mildew in here. Arcane tomes of dark sorcery line the walls, up to the ceiling. The only light comes from the pale moonlight seeping in through the tall glass windows, and still, Kitty is the brightest thing in here. Even with downcast eyes and draped sideways across the ruined armchair.

Illyana tries to temper her fury.

“I didn’t ask you to come for a reason,” she cautions darkly. She tortures herself once again with the image of Kitty not phasing in time to avoid the slice of her soulsword.

“You didn’t have to ask!” Kitty smiles, laughing a little. She then locks eyes with Illyana in a way that is so tempered with longing and love, that it steals her breath. “It’s what friends do.”

Maybe it’s because of how close they are, but Kitty is the one non-magical being who can still be physically injured by Illyana’s soulsword. Kitty phasing in time isn't even a guarantee--sometimes her power is ineffective in this context. It is a terrifying thing, to know this. To be close so close to someone that your soul emanates a fear of hurting them. 

Illyana dry swallows. When she finally speaks, it sounds like a croak. “You don’t understand. I don’t want you here.” 

She tosses a stepping disk onto the floor between them, the image of Xavier’s Institute flickering warmly inside it. “Go home, Kitty.” She then turns to face the windows, unable to look at the hurt expression on Kitty’s face.

When the stepping disk continues humming, unused, for too long a moment--Illyana crooks her head to peer back over her shoulder.

Once she does, Kitty rolls her eyes. “Anyways.”

She stands up, rising out of the ruined armchair, and stretches her arms overhead. “I’m hungry. Let’s raid the kitchen.”

It’s December 23rd. 


	2. Chapter 2

It’s December 24th.

She stares at Kitty across the expanse of the great hall dining table, watching her wolf down breakfast. They have plenty of human food on hand for Illyana, of course--Kitty was delighted to discover this late last night as they dug through pantry. She even burst into laughter when she found the shelf stocked with enough name-brand peanut butter to endure a nuclear winter.

When Illyana woke up this morning she braced herself for something bad to happen. It’s normal in Limbo to stay ready for violence and expect misery, but she woke up preparing herself for the emotional fallout from Kitty fleeing in the wee hours of the morning, after they’d parted and said goodnight Kitty as went to sleep in the guest wing and Illyana went to bed in the other guest wing. She can’t sleep in the master bedroom, where Belasco lived.

But she only had a few waking moments to fill herself with these feelings of preparatory dark foreboding until she heard the bright and clear tone of Kitty’s chatter filtering through the halls.

There are no carpets, no tapestries on the wall, no softness of any kind to muffle sound in the castle. Illyana padded barefoot straight to where Kitty was amicably chatting up the demon servant who’d brought news of an intruder yesterday.

“--friend has hands just like that! Three fingers and everything!”

Kitty senses Illyana’s presence somehow, and turns around to greet her with a smile. “Isn’t that right, ‘Yana? Kurt’s hands are just like that!”

The demon servant looks like he’s going to puke. He’s withering under Kitty’s cheerful enthusiasm.

Illyana gently hooks her hand around Kitty’s elbow and starts to lead her away. Kitty, allowing it, turns back to the demon servant cowering against the wall. “I’m Kitty, by the way! What’s your name?”

The demon servant whispers something that Illyana can’t hear.

Still letting Illyana drag her away, Kitty replies, “It’s nice to meet you Py’ll! See ‘ya!”

Once they’re out of (apparently) Py’ll’s earshot, Illyana laughingly chides Kitty about being nice to everyone she meets, even in hell. And Kitty laughs at herself in response. And for a moment they are simply just two young women, weightless and tender. One of them is brimming with sweetness, and one of them bursting with hell.

Kitty’s eyes grow wide at the sight of another platter of scrambled eggs and toast being lowered gently on the table before her. “Gosh, you really do live like a Queen down here. No wonder you keep running off here alone!”

Illyana having already eaten her fill, sits with her feet up on the edge of her chair, knees resting against the table. She picks at a loose thread in her pajama bottoms. “Remind me to impress you with scrambled eggs back home.”

“An’ toaf,” Kitty adds, through a mouthful of it.

Illyana smiles slyly. “Sure. I can make that for you, too.” Something fizzy happens in her stomach.

Kitty decides the course of their day--they are headed out to source a Christmas tree and decorations. Imagining all of the dangers and none of the actual, living trees that await them in the wilds of Limbo, Illyana vehemently objects. At first. But Kitty Pryde is...not an easy person to say no too. Especially when the moment you agree to go along with her whims, she lights up like you’ve just given her everything she ever asked for.

They find a husk of a tree with enough remaining branches to hang ornaments from. It’s bleached white from the sun, making it a delicate skeleton. Illyana doesn’t think it ever was alive. Only dead or deadly things dot the landscape in Limbo.

They come across a prowling pack of winged demons on the trip home, and fight side by side. It exhilarates Illyana, to have Kitty fighting alongside her. She’s proud for reasons she cannot yet name. All of her feels fizzy and light, now.

They scour the poison gardens for ornaments once they get back to the castle. Illyana watches Kitty picking through the teeth and bits of bone that make up the gravel here, knowing she should feel ashamed at exposing her friend to this kind of horror. But when Kitty finds a yellowed demon fang the size of her pinky, she excitedly starts hunting for more--even recruiting Illyana in the task.

When Kitty is satisfied that they have enough, she pulls them all into her hand and then arranges them on her flattened palm.

“Look,” she tells Illyana with satisfaction. “It’s a Star of David. We can put it on top of the tree.”

Sure enough, the familiar six-pointed symbol is laying lopsided in Kitty’s hand, made out of varying fangs. Illyana has every point of this symbol _very_ memorized from the one that hangs on a delicate silver chain around Kitty's neck and rests just over her sternum. Illyana could probably even be a cartographer of Kitty's freckles at this point. Draw you a map and everything. 

“It’s okay...on a Christmas tree?” Illyana asks, but it comes out like she’s asking for permission.

“It’s a holiday bush,” Kitty answers with a little smile, straightening the fangs in her palm. 


	3. Chapter 3

The holiday bush, barren-limbed as it may be, is quite a sight in the study. So is Kitty, who officiously moves around to drape a popcorn garland over the bone-white branches. Py’ll lit the magelight sconces and what appeared sickly green on previous nights now appears...festive?

Illyana goes back to twining together the fangs of the Star of David with pliant metal wire. “Is this sacrilege?”

“Huh?” Kitty turns around, then sees what Illyana is doing. “Oh.”

She goes back to decorating the tree. “No, I don’t think so. I mean, I remember making them out of popsicle sticks in Hebrew School so if that’s okay, I’m sure this is fine too.”

Illyana can’t get it to stay together. She sets the delicate, unfinished structure down on the weathered desk. “No, not just this. I mean. Any of it? What you’re doing? _Where_ you’re doing it? And...me?”

Kitty chuckles a little, thinking it’s a joke. “Are you asking if _you’re_ somehow against my faith, Illyana?”

In a voice much smaller than she meant it to be, Illyana answers, “Your faith is important to you.”

Kitty turns around again, and when she sees what Illyana’s face is doing, she pauses. “Oh.”

She puts down the garland before approaching her. “You don’t really want to talk about theology right now, do you?”

Illyana bristles because yes, she very much does. “Nevermind.” She gets up and starts to leave, but Kitty grasps her wrist to keep her from going.

She locks her gaze with Illyana’s and explains, “Being Jewish is an important part of my identity. But my faith doesn’t dictate that holiness should be limited only to certain people. Or certain kinds of relationships.” Kitty is still holding onto Illyana’s wrist and it’s almost like they are holding hands.

Illyana pulls her wrist away. “That’s not what I mean.”

Kitty smiles warmly and gives an infuriatingly casual little shrug. “I know. I’m just saying, my rabbi argues that the government’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriage actually violates our religious liberties. So….no worries there.”

Her heart starts thumping against her ribs. She can feel her pulse. “That’s not what I mean,” Illyana echoes.

“Well...what do you mean, then?” Kitty’s eyes are sparkling but it doesn’t blunten any of the panic rising in Illyana’s chest.

She’s struggling to pluck the right words out of the ether and as the seconds pass, she can feel all the wrong ones surging forward. So she chooses those ones instead of saying nothing at all, which feels worse. “I mean I killed a version of you once.”

Kitty takes a step forward. “And you’re worried you’ll hurt me now?” She looks up at Illyana through her eyelashes as she asks this, which somehow feels like cheating.

Illyana takes a step back. “No, of course not!”

Kitty takes another step. “Then what’s the problem? That other version of me...look, it wasn’t your fault, okay? You can’t blame yourself for what your abuser made you do.”

Illyana feels her horns starting to grow. This is not a conversation she wants to be having. “Hey, Kitty? Get the f$%# out of my castle.”

Kitty rolls her eyes. “Hey, Illyana? Shut up. Come on, why can’t you just let yourself be happy for once? We were having such a good time!”

“It’s not that simple,” Illyana mutters.

“Of course it is!” Kitty exclaims, throwing her hands up in frustration. She then leans forward, tilting her face up to catch Illyana’s gaze. She speaks through a fixed grin: “See? I’m doin’ it right now!”

“Stop!” Illyana says, stung by Kitty’s dismissive attitude.

With a frustrated growl, Kitty drops her face into her hands. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. I just--” She sighs into her hands instead of finishing her sentence.

After a beat, she speaks while hiding her face in her hands. “Look, I’ve just been trying really hard to show you I’m having a good time and that I’m happy with you, even here, and--”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“No, I know, but you, like, don’t even know to ask for help like that? Or reach out to people?” She drops her hands, finally, and straightens to look up at Illyana again, brows drawn. “Because let's be real, you don’t even know how amazing you are.”

Kitty’s eyes spark with courage, and she speaks to Illyana with the fierce conviction that short girls in general always seem to possess. “Like, that’s the thing about going through what you did--you feel like you’re a burden to other people, and can’t even ask your best f--rooma--your-- _me_ to spend time with you over the holidays! You just left!”

Illyana scoffs. “What, like I’m going to invite you down to the demonic hell plane I live in when I’m not at school?”

Kitty just blinks at her like she’s dumb. “Uh? _Yeah_?”

Illyana shakes her head in frustration. Her scalp is stinging. “You don’t understand.”

“The $#%& I don’t!” Kitty jabs a finger towards her in accusation, “You think you're not worth the effort, right? _You_ think you’re worthless! _Right_? But that’s abuser logic! You were raised by a man who _wanted_ you to think you’re worthless and weak on purpose, because--”

Illyana roars, or rather, allows Darkchylde to. She feels the full weight of her horns and the contorting of her ugly demonic features, knowing they’ll be even uglier now, cast in relief from the feeble magelight shadows. She looms over Kitty, letting her fangs show and feeling sickened that her first instinct was to lash out like this. She hates herself even as the words come out: “ _ **Does this look weak to you?!**_ ”

But Kitty simply says “No,” and then Kitty $%#@ing Pryde grabs her by the horns to bring Illyana's face down to kiss her.

Illyana pulls back, dazed from her first kiss. She takes one look at Kitty before immediately leaning in for the second one. 

She tastes someone else's smile for the first time. She feels awkward as her own dumb grin makes their teeth briefly knock, but Kitty just inhales her laughter and pulls her even tighter.    


	4. ~Epilogue~

It is December 25th.

Illyana wakes up to the unexpected weight of her girlfriend flinging herself sideways across the bed and across her.

“Wake up! It’s Christmas!” Kitty yells face-down into the blanket. “I want to see what presents Santa left under the holiday bush! I’ve never done this before!”

Illyana sits up and the movement makes Kitty roll down her torso. She lands on her back, in Illyana’s lap, and looking up at her. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Illyana answers. She gives in to the terrifying urge to smooth some of Kitty’s hair away from her face, and afterwards is very glad that she did.

On the way to the study, Illyana experiences her third and fourth kisses.

After ripping open the gifts that mysteriously appeared under the holiday bush overnight (which Kitty would not admit to conspiring with Py’ll to wrap and place there) Kitty rushes with a gasp to the tall windows. “No!”

Illyana follows, alarmed, but is immediately put at ease by Kitty’s look of wonder as she gazes out over the gardens. “It’s _snowing_.”

It is--snowflakes are blanketing everything, drifting gently.

Illyana and Kitty take one look at each other before racing each other to get outside. They stumble through the double doors, struggling to get ahead of each other for no reason and both laughing.

Kitty, the victor and still running, tilts her head up to catch some on her tongue. But she leans over and starts spitting once it does. She looks up at Illyana with her tongue hanging out. “Ith _ath_.”

Illyana laughs, holding Kitty’s face with both her hands. “It’s ass?”

One of the snowflakes has landed on Kitty’s cheek, and Illyana tries to wipe it off with her thumb but it leaves a smudge.

“ _Ash_ ,” Kitty corrects.

“Oh no,” Illyana says with a laugh as she leans in, knowing her face will end up smudged too. She can faintly taste ashes in her fifth kiss, but neither of them mind.

As it continues to snow in Limbo, Illyana notices that it brings a hush to the world the same way real snow does. She has her sixth kiss, and soon after this she just loses count. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a very raw first-pass unbeta'd thing that is TOO long and i'm HOPING isn't so full of errors and mistakes that it makes it unenjoyable, but thank you for reading regardless bc i had a blast writing it!!!!


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